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Mom, if you're reading this, thanks for the Omaha Steaks. Tonight, Elly, Tova, and I went down to the grill and laid out on the lawn while we cooked up some great filets and burgers. I think I ate the eqiuvalent of three small cows tonight. It was a good old American beef-fest.

Since we had to sit down by the grill for about 45 minutes for the vegetables to finish cooking, I had plenty of time to show Tova every little feature of our apartment complex's courtyard. She is quickly becoming a mini-botanist. Every tree or flower that we look at is subject to the Tova Scientific Method, which includes:

1. Pointing to the bark, leaves, flowers, etc.
2. Scratching the tree trunks until there is no room for more bark "samples" underneath her fingernails.
3. Feeling the bark to gauge texture.
4. Grabbing any leaves, needles, pinecones, flowers, or seeds within reach.
5. "Patting" the plant or tree (as if it were a good dog or a friendly stuffed animal).

We went through this process for about a half-dozen trees and bushes this evening. When the novelty of her arboreal research project wore off, I had to resort to the simpler entertainment of tossing her two or three feet in the air over and over again. Her teeth must have been hurting pretty bad because she was shreiking so loud and so high-pitched that I thought either my eardrums were going to burst or all the neighborhood dogs were going to come running and attack us. And this was outdoors. Everytime she opened her mouth it was like a supersonic jet flew by.

One funny thing was Tova's aversion to grass. We had her out on this picnic blanket, about 10 feet away from the grill. She was separated from us by nicely mowed green grass, but to watch her freaking out on the edge of the blanket you'd think she was on a rock island in the middle of bubbling lava. She would get right to the very edge of the blanket and then wave her hands around like she was warding off the grass or gesturing for it to part in two. When that had no effect, she would shreik even louder. I worked pretty hard trying to convince her that the grass was not our enemy, but she still refuses to crawl on it. It's the one thing that immobilizes her. It's the kryptonite to her superman crawl.